


Shotgun

by betts



Series: Honeycomb [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Artist Hux, Cigarettes, Daddy Kink, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, M/M, POV Hux, Past Abuse, Post-Honeycomb, Recreational Drug Use, Sharing Clothes, Shotgunning, Sugar Daddy, Timestamp, Unsafe Use of Firearms, heavy-handed symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 03:26:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6687301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without Ben, the house was just a place. With Ben, it was home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shotgun

**Author's Note:**

> I have succumbed to peer pressure.

That smile. A perfect row of straight white teeth amid blood-red lips, darkening her perfect, umber complexion. Round face framed by shiny black ringlets. Eyes boring into him, through him, his innards raw and exposed and vulnerable to her whims.

“So I guess this is it,” Elise told him, holding out a manicured hand between them, her purse dangling from the shoulder of her burgundy blouse--new, Hux had never seen it before. The thought burned him, that she had a life beyond him, one where she didn’t feel compelled to show him her new purchases, where neither of them sought each other’s wavering, over-critical approval.

The afternoon sunlight stopped short of the sheer blinds in her lawyer’s conference room, air thick with the stale smell of hours-old coffee and artificial sweetener. Hux swallowed the knot in his throat and offered his most professional smile. “Seems so.”

He shook her hand, flashing back to the first time he’d held it, barely twenty years old, paint and clay and wood ash always caked in his nails that he could never scrub out no matter how hard he tried and he hoped she wouldn’t notice. She probably had. She noticed everything.

He let his touch linger a beat too long before dropping her grasp, sliding his hand into the pocket of his slacks and fingering the ring he still carried around despite never wearing it.

“If you need anything...” he offered, even though he’d given her everything worth giving. He didn’t finish his sentence--she knew.

“Of course,” she replied, something of a pitying smile gracing her lips. Hux imagined the thick waxy taste of her lipstick underneath the fruity gloss, the warm softness of her tongue and the breathy little laugh while she’d look around and say, _Not here, baby. Wait until we get home._

But those days were long over, well before the execution of ink currently drying on their divorce papers.

She departed with a smile in lieu of a goodbye, her silence more final than any words. He closed his eyes and listened to the soft click of her heels down the hallway, knowing he’d never see her again.

***

He sat in the driver’s seat of his car, his forehead pressed to the wheel and his hand holding the keys in his ignition without bothering to turn it. With a sigh, he let go to fumble in his cup holder for his cell phone, which he didn’t look at as he held down the button and muttered, “Call Patricia Newhaven.”

“Calling Patricia Newhaven,” Siri replied.

The phone rang twice before Patty picked up. “Yes, Mr. Hux?” came her young, hopeful, relentlessly cheery voice.

“I won’t be back in for a few days. Set my out-of-office until Tuesday. Reschedule my appointments, cancel anything repeating. And keep an eye on my email for me, I won’t be checking it.”

“Yes, sir,” Patty said with apprehension. “Are you...all right?”

Hux let out a long breath. “I will be.”

“Okay, well, let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”

“Thank you, Patty.” And as an afterthought, “Excellent work today.”

They said their goodbyes and Hux hung up, glancing at his phone and the six text messages waiting for him, all likely from Ben, who was using his spring break to visit Rey.

The messages would cheer him up, lift the heavy burden from his chest. But he didn’t want the burden lifted; he wanted it to crush him.

***

“Hey buddy--whoa, you’re not looking too good,” Poe said from his porch, lifting his Raybans to his hairline. Today’s look was a pink fishnet affair and chevron-patterned leggings. This, beyond the blooming trees and sweet air, told Hux it was now officially spring. BeeBee yapped inside, paws scrabbling at the glass.

Hux looked down at himself in confusion. He hadn’t even loosened his tie.

“I mean,” Poe gestured his hand up and down Hux’s form, “your aura’s all...off. Sad-like. It’s depressing.”

“Sorry?” Hux asked.

“Nah, man, I’m concerned, that’s all. Have a seat.”

Hux sat down on the porch chair beside him. The view of the apartment held nothing particularly interesting, just more apartments and a parking lot, but Hux had to admit there was something mildly magical about the place, some otherness that made the three-by-five patch of cement with two rusty chairs and a wooden crate so peaceful.

This was where Hux had first met Ben, nearly a year ago, though Ben likely didn’t have any recollection of it, and Hux had no idea who Ben was at the time. He’d been leaving the apartment to go to class while Hux had stopped by the Damerons’ for his bi-weekly pick-up, apparently interrupting a small barbecue. Literally small, in that it was just Poe and Finn with a camp stove grilling vegan hot dogs.

“Yo Benny!” Poe had shouted.

Ben turned around, perpetually exasperated expression trained on Poe, not even noticing Hux, which Hux would later learn had more to do with Ben’s inability to attend to too many stimuli at once more so than his potential rudeness. Hux distinctly remembered letting his gaze linger far longer than acceptable, thinking something along the lines of: _Damn._

“You wanna hot dog?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Ben had replied.

“If you talk to Rey, tell her we’re gonna have an all-night John Hughes marathon tonight.”

Ben waved his hand in acknowledgement and went on his way.

Hux had never told Ben this was when they met, because the second meeting made for a better story.

Now, many months later, Hux sat in nearly the same spot he had then, except now he was divorced, sans vegan hotdog, and Ben was halfway around the world on Hux’s dime. A lot had changed in a year.

“You and Benny doing good?” Poe asked.

“Perfect,” Hux replied, scratching at his stubble. He’d been growing it out since he first saw the alluring effect of beard-burn on Ben’s inner thighs.

“Then why do you look like someone just ganked your kidney?”

Hux had no reason to avert the question, not that it was particularly standard practice to divulge your personal life to your drug dealer. “We finalized the divorce today.”

“Ah damn, that’s rough. What’d she end up with?”

Hux shrugged. “Alimony. The yacht. All our vacation homes. A restraining order.” Among many other assets that Hux didn’t want to think about. He managed to keep the house, his car, and his pension, which were the most important items. Provided some of his riskier investments proved fruitful, he’d recoup the losses within a few years.

Poe whistled and shook his head. “I’m not gonna ask.”

“That’s for the best.” The court hearings seemed unnecessary, but her lawyers did manage to paint Hux in a particularly negative light, not that he disagreed with any part of the case made against him. At this point he was thankful she didn’t press charges. The biggest win, she’d explained to him during their last night together, riding him, a drunken vengeance fuck, would be to never see him again. After the bloodbath of the hearings and everything they unearthed, Hux couldn’t blame her.

“Lemme get your stuff,” Poe said, standing and sliding the door open. To BeeBee, he added, “Nope, don’t even try it, get back in there--” and closed it behind him.

***

Hux pressed his garage door button, the rumble of its closure echoing through the empty rooms, enormous and sterile, like a hotel. Without Ben, the house was just a place. With Ben, it was home. Even Elise didn’t hold that power, to make the taupe drywall and track lighting and crown molding come to life, to give it more meaning than strings of particles clumped together.

Everywhere Ben went, he made it his own, totally unaware of himself, singularly focused on training his thoughts and feelings into constant submission to his will, a razor-sharp focus on himself to keep his demons at bay. Which is how he hadn’t noticed when he crawled into Hux’s chest and made a home there too, neither of them acknowledging it until the thought of giving Ben up--the fragile architecture of him, on display for hands unworthy of such beauty--nearly drove Hux mad.

Hux mindlessly went about his evening chores: feed Millicent, set the drycleaning out, go through the mail. By the time he was finished, he found the sun still out, barely six in the evening. He stood in the hallway of the second floor, glancing at the door to his bedroom and the one directly across from it, which used to be Elise’s closet. When Ben had moved in, he suggested--sheepish, with more honesty than he usually gave--that he have a Safe Space. Not safe for himself, but for Hux. A place to close himself off from the world and cool down if he needed it. He hadn’t yet, though he often used it as a private study.

Hux opened the door and flipped on the light. The room was empty save for Ben’s old mattress from his previous apartment, his ugly secondhand couch he’d taken from there too. Boxes stacked in corners. Piles and piles of books and clothes strewn about from Ben’s hurry to pack. Any other place in the house, Hux wouldn’t have allowed such a thing, but he wanted Ben to have a space that was free from Hux’s rules. If there was one thing he’d learned from his relationship with Elise, it was that not everyone was comfortable folding their self-perception into the will of someone else.

Now Hux was grateful for it. He shrugged off his suit jacket, toed off his shoes, and slipped his tie from his neck, piling them with all of other Ben’s discarded materials--like he was here, somehow, simply by combining their possessions.

Hux crawled onto the mattress and buried his face in Ben’s lumpy pillows--breathing in the faint smell of Ben, which has no discernible qualities other than reminding him of abstract concepts: _large_ and _happy_ and _young_ and _bright_ ; Ben’s hair threaded through Hux’s fingers and the tension it created in his grip as he pulled it; the half-huff-laugh sound at the end of most of his sentences. Hux dragged the old afghan over his prone form and huddled himself into Ben’s specter of an embrace.

***

The trilling of his phone woke him hours later, the sun having finally set. It took a handful of seconds for Hux to get his bearings before groping in his discarded jacket for his phone. He answered it without looking. Though his voice hung heavy with sleep, he managed a complacent, “Yes, Ben?”

“Daddy,” Ben said, just a word, an innocent one at that, but every time Ben spoke it, it sent a spike of white-hot euphoria through Hux, even though Ben only ever used it when he wanted something--he knew it was the fastest and most effective way of making Hux buckle, breaking his will. Hux enjoyed that weakness more than the strength the position gave him, enjoyed wrapping himself around Ben like a vice, forming to his imposing shape.

Hux was too sleep-sodden to stifle the heavy breath of pleasure that escaped him in response. A beat of silence followed, and Ben said, “You’re ignoring me.”

“I’m sorry,” Hux replied immediately, a word he had refused to say for most of his life, but now gave out freely, defaulting to a guilt-ridden flinch of wrongness like raising a hand to a dog. An explanation--an excuse--nearly breached his lips but he kept his mouth shut. An apology became useless if followed by negation. He hadn’t mentioned he was planning to finalize his divorce while Ben was away, not wanting to impose his petty sordid history on a much-needed vacation.

More silence. Hux glanced at the clock on his phone. Three in the morning. He brought it back to his ear and asked, “What time is it there?”

“A little after eight. Rey wakes me up to go running with her every morning.”

“That sounds dreadful.”

“The worst.” After quitting his job and thus his only means of maintaining his physique, Ben had begun utilizing Elise’s basement gym, which had gone untouched after she left, Hux never having exercised voluntarily a day in his life.

“I miss you,” Ben added quietly, a somber benediction, an admittance. The earnestness in his voice was what Hux lived for anymore; his purity set Hux alight with a kind of passion he thought had died in him long ago.

Hux ached with self-restraint, every conversation with Ben a battle in itself: to maintain the niceties of benign conversation, or to ravage Ben with the affection and adoration he deserved and that Hux worked hard to keep dormant until it was warranted, appropriate. Some interactions were more difficult than others. Like this one. Instead, he settled on, “I miss you too.”

“I’ll be home soon,” Ben said. _Home. Home. Home._ Their home. Their shared place. They were the ground underneath each other’s feet; Hux couldn’t ask for a stronger foundation. God, he missed Ben.

Apropos nothing, Hux admitted, “I’m sleeping in your room,” hoping it explained his feelings better than anything else.

“Oh.” A confusing lilt that Hux couldn’t decipher between surprise or irritation.

“I’m sorry,” Hux repeated, because why not.

“No, it’s fine. It’s…” Fondness; Hux imagined him smiling. “Nice.”

Rey’s voice came muffled in the background of the line, “Benny, come have breakfast with me.”

“I gotta go,” Ben said to Hux. A pause. Nervous, still, somehow. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Ben.” Hux recited the words like uttering gospel, a wave of relief washing over him each time, like a baptism, cleansing him of the heft and grime of mere living.

The connection cut, and with it, the tether that had been holding Hux afloat.

***

“Pack of Reds,” Hux said, gesturing to the wall behind the counter of the gas station. Three words he hadn’t said since he advanced to the occasional cigar at the age of twenty-four. It was better for him, he reasoned--one cigar per evening wrought less damage than a pack of cigarettes. He thumbed his ring in the pocket of Ben’s jeans. They hung loose on his hips, but the length was right; he had cinched the waist using his favorite leather belt with which he often beat Ben raw. Ben’s t-shirt fit poorly too, the collar stretched and exposing too much of Hux’s shoulder, the jersey cotton draped sloppily around his thin form.

The cashier slid a box of Reds into the divot under the glass, and Hux paid for them with cash. He dropped the loose change in the penny caddy and left the store, meeting the first rays of the morning sun over a half-abandoned strip mall.

***

It had been easier to acquire a nine-millimeter bullet casting than Hux had anticipated; a farmer named George had one posted for sale on Craigslist. Hux drove down to Kentucky, a little town outside of Frankfort called Hatton. George invited Hux inside and offered him a glass of sweet tea to abate the early season heat. Hux accepted, and they talked for nearly an hour about things the people who knew Hux would never think to bother him with: the weather, baseball, church outings, lawncare maintenance, baseball again. George liked to repeat himself and nodded slowly as he spoke, his scruffy jowls quivering with the movement, a sweat-yellowed ballcap adorning his sunburnt balding scalp.

Hux found his company immensely comforting.

In the afternoon, at the hardware store, Ben had sent Hux a selfie, obviously taken by Rey of the two of them. In it, Ben was smiling, eyes closed, dimples framing his lips which Hux had recently taken to kissing every time he saw them. Rey’s face was partially hidden outside of the frame, happier than the previous two occasions Hux had met her.

He replied, _Looks like you're having fun,_ because the only other words encompassing him, drowning him, were: _I need you. Come home._

He stopped by a jeweler, too, and had the onyx and diamonds taken out of his ring. The bag they were placed in looked like the kind that he used to buy coke in. He had no plans for the stones yet, but for now they’d make a lovely addition to his art box’s junk drawer.

Later, in his attic, he took the remaining eighteen-karat white gold band with the now-empty setting and inspected it. Despite wearing it daily for eleven years, it held remarkably little wear and tear. A couple scratches, some smudging. Dirty from having carried it in his pocket for the past six months. He thumbed over the tiny inscription, dragging his nail across the letters: _Aut vincere aut mori._ Either to conquer or to die--a friendly reminder from dear Elise, for whom Hux’s best was never good enough.

He lowered the visor of his welding mask and set to work.

***

The sun had just begun setting when he finished, today’s project being an eighteen-karat gold bullet to put in the magazine of his Sig P226, which Elise had bought him for reasons Hux to this day couldn’t comprehend. Maybe because they lived in Cincinnati. Maybe to make Hux look tougher than he was. Maybe because she honest-to-god believed he would like it, and that was how little she knew him. From an outsider perspective, it would make sense that a COO of a bomb manufacturing company would have a vested personal interest in guns. But the outsider perspective of Hux had never been remotely close to reality.

The bullet was an ugly thing--gold mixed with bronze Hux had on hand for sculpting purposes. He compared it to another nine-millimeter and they looked the same, then slipped it into the magazine, the magazine back into the gun, and tucked it into the back of his (Ben’s) pants. He opened the door of his miscellaneous unfired works cabinet and picked out a plain clay sphere, about the size of a grapefruit. He’d been making them frequently, spaced out on his wheel, stoned out of his mind and thinking about planets: the fragility of them, of life on them.

The world was a beautiful place filled with ugly people, Hux thought, and he often held both in his hands.

Hux grabbed his cigarettes and a lighter before heading out of the house.

***

The backyard looked out onto a valley of forest, and Hux wandered into the brush, the light spring foliage casting shadows in the early evening sunlight, rapidly fading. A quarter mile in, he found a clearing bisected by a fallen tree, a little lower than waist height, and set the sphere on it. It stayed put, and Hux paced backward.

From afar, his little planet looked so small in comparison to the overwhelming green of the place. Trivial. An imposition to its own surroundings.

Most people were unaware that over ninety percent of First Order Enterprise’s accounts receivables involved construction companies buying explosives for demolition purposes. The other ten percent were the United States government. When Hux took over the company, he familiarized himself with his products--explosives, by their components alone, not being altogether different from clay or glass or bronze or any of the other mediums he’d worked with over the years. He’d convinced himself, delusioned himself, into believing it was all art; Hux was a maker of both spheres of pottery and worlds of ash, his tools clay and white phosphorous.

Ironically, he’d met Elise on November 6, 2004, exactly one day before the start of the Second Battle of Fallujah. His father had assured him First Order Enterprises had nothing to do with it, that the government had opted for someone else’s Mark 77s. When Hux took over the company years later, he never looked into whether or not it was true, nor did he reflect too deeply on the effect the event had on the inception of his relationship with his then-wife.

Hux slapped his pack of Reds into the palm of his hand, then slipped one out and perched it between his lips. The flame that followed left an imprint on his retinas, and he took a long, sweet drag.

He pulled the gun out of his (Ben’s) pants. The metal felt warm in his hand, clammy from sweat. He’d only practiced with it a few times, at Elise’s request. She had dragged him to a gun range on occasion, less in interest of gun safety and more as a kind of pornography. After, she’d beg for him to fuck her rough, filthy, shoving his gunmetal-stained fingers down her throat. She always refused to call him _daddy_ but if Hux had ever put a fully loaded gun in her mouth, she probably would have come from the heft of a barrel on her tongue alone. Maybe if he’d tried to kill her more often instead of trapping her alive, she’d have wanted to stay with him.

He flipped off the safety and raised the gun to the sphere, his sight clouded by the smoke of the cigarette dangling from his lips.

Then he held his breath and pulled the trigger.

***

Ben found Hux a couple days later in the attic, with clay caked onto his skin and stretching it in a way that Hux could only describe as how he imagined a fish might feel in water. He was two bowls in, propped against a wall and sitting on a blue tarp surrounded by nine clay spheres where he was the sun. He knew he was the sun because the skylight directly above him shone down the noontime glow on his filthy hands.

“You’re wearing my clothes,” Ben said.

Hux looked up at him. More than a planet, more than the sun--a whole galaxy, darkness shattered by billions of pinpricks of immeasurable light. “I miss you,” Hux replied in explanation, unsure how long it had been since he last slept. Maybe he was asleep now.

“I’m right here.” Irritation. Ben didn’t like that Hux smoked.

“Be closer then. You’re always too far.”

Ben stepped gingerly over a planet and sat beside Hux, their sides touching, Hux suddenly overcome with immense relief, like being pulled in after drifting at sea for days on end. “I thought you’d pick me up at the airport.”

“Did I not?”

“You hired someone else to do it.”

Hux vaguely remembered texting Patty to check Ben’s itinerary and have a car pick him up. “I’ve been a bit…” He gestured to the galaxy. “Preoccupied.”

“Not gonna lie,” Ben began, the irritation in his voice giving way to something less stodgy, “definitely saw a stack of divorce papers in the den. Executed ones. So I’m taking it that’s a thing that happened while I was gone.”

Hux nodded. “It is a thing that happened, yes.”

“Are you...okay?”

A bubble of laughter escaped Hux, which he tried to shove back in with his hand so Ben wouldn’t be offended.

“What’s so funny?” Ben asked, half-laughing too like Hux imagined he was trained to do whenever he didn’t understand conventional humor--which was always.

“It’s just that,” Hux wiped a tear--happiness or sadness?-- from the corner of his eye, “I’m really not.”

“Oh.” A pause; Hux could almost hear Ben’s mental flowchart of litmus tests he went through every time he met an emotional conundrum. “Can I--”

But Hux saved Ben from navigating through the labyrinth and instead took his hand, palm up. He slid Ben's arm over the lap of his crossed legs--Ben’s clothes splotched by clay--running his fingers up soft, warm skin and stopping at the healed burn. He leaned down and kissed it, just a brush of his lips, and Ben sighed in pleasure. Hux would never tire of Ben’s lack of apprehension now, their ability to touch one another whenever they wanted, however often they wanted, a marvel of time and place that either of them could be so lucky to possess one another.

Now that he was touching Ben, the world seemed like an okay place again. He brushed Ben’s hair back and pressed his mouth to the juncture of Ben’s neck and shoulder, laving open-mouthed kisses against him. He felt the satisfying rapid thudding of Ben’s pulse against his lips, every inch of him screaming to get closer.

Ben swallowed and Hux felt that too, sucking his flesh between his teeth and biting it, always eager to mark him. Own him.

“I miss you,” Hux muttered, muffled in Ben’s neck.

“I’m right here, Daddy,” Ben whispered back, his head falling against the wall.

Hux moaned lightly, his entire body suddenly alight at the utterance of a single word, hardening in the leg of Ben’s jeans. He sucked Ben’s earlobe and carded his fingers through his hair, gripping it and pulling out of habit. Making him hurt out of habit.

Strained, Ben said, “I can’t...I can’t smoke, you know. I mean, I don’t.”

“I know,” Hux replied, confused but unconcerned given Ben’s habit of disjointed segues. He tugged at the bottom of Ben’s t-shirt and lifted it up, pulling it off, moving with each other easily from months of practice. “I’d never ask it of you,” he added, murmured against Ben’s exposed chest, biting a firm bit of pectoral muscle.

Ben gasped; in the same voice he reserved for begging, a half-octave lower than his normal voice and a notch quieter, he replied, “But you could make me.”

Not a disjointed segue after all. Hux sat back and looked Ben in the eyes--nearly amber, holding the depth and breadth of the entire universe, all Hux’s for the taking, greedy and insatiable. Earnestness stared back at him, familiar conflict that Hux liked to polish away with strict commands and earned praises.

“All right.” He pulled Ben onto his lap, astride his thighs, and Ben came willingly, surprisingly graceful for such a loping form. Hux groped for his pipe and Zippo and brought it to his lips, flicking the lighter to the bowl and taking a low, even hit.

He held it, and pulled Ben by the back of the neck toward him, meeting their lips together and parting Ben’s with his tongue. He exhaled, and Ben breathed it in, breathed Hux in, taking all the air from Hux's lungs which he was more than happy to provide. The second hit Ben inhaled faster and deeper, a little moan tacked to the end. By the third, Hux followed the breath with his tongue, sealing their lips together. He put the pipe down and pulled Ben closer to him, ravaging him, biting his lips, pulling his hair, palming his hard cock through his jeans.

“Daddy,” Ben gasped against him, a general plea for Hux to give him everything, which was all Hux ever wanted to do in turn.

“Tell me what you need, baby,” Hux muttered, already flicking open the button of Ben’s jeans and pulling down the zipper.

“Need to make you feel better.”

“You do,” Hux replied, pulling the elastic of Ben’s briefs to the base of his cock. “You are.”

Time melted as Hux lazily jacked Ben in his fist, heated kisses turning into Ben panting against his mouth, tiny hitched breaths echoing in Hux’s ears like hymns.

“Tell me how you feel,” Hux said, nipping at Ben’s chin, nosing over to mark up the other side of his throat.

“Good. God, really good.” Ben fumbled with Hux’s belt buckle. “Wanna…” he struggled, nearly a whine before Hux brushed Ben’s hands away and did it on his own. He generally only concerned himself with getting Ben off, but he would never deprive Ben of wanting the same of him. He pulled his cock out and took them both in hand, precome-slick and sliding against one another, the taut pull of the clay coating Hux’s hands adding a whole additional, intense layer of pleasure.

Ben covered Hux’s grip with his and they found a slow, blissful rhythm.

Hux lost track of time again, lost track of his thoughts, floating along the riverbank of Ben’s affection which Hux would never deserve. His climax built slowly, twin stars circling each other, racing around in an inward spiral leading to an inevitable collision. A supernova.

He could feel Ben tense above him, his hips shuddering into their shared grasp and letting the steady rhythm fall away into shallow, needy thrusts.

“Daddy, I’m--” Ben began.

“I know, baby,” Hux whispered to him, broken, so close he could taste it. “Come for me.”

Ben stilled and let out a shocked moan as he came, louder than usual, coating their fists and his stomach and his own t-shirt on Hux’s body. He kissed Hux again, hard and sharp, all teeth and thirst, and Hux came from the greediness of the gesture alone, moaning into Ben’s mouth, pulsing come into his palm.

They kissed and kissed and kissed, past the aftershocks and into the afterglow, a shredded-apart nebula in their wake.

“Is it always like this?” Ben asked between kisses, groaning when Hux ran a come-soaked hand over his hip, feeling the oversensitive shiver run through his body.

“Mostly,” Hux replied, feeling himself smile against Ben’s mouth for the first time since he'd left, weightless, bereft of the burden of his marriage, completely and finally free. He could devote himself to Ben now, his complete attention and affection and admiration, his full self. All the love in the universe, all belonging to Ben.

“You should make me do it more often.”

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the [Honeycomb Masterpost](http://www.bettydays.tumblr.com/tagged/honeycomb-masterpost) for all works related to this verse.
> 
> Beta'd by [brawlite](http://www.brawlite.tumblr.com).


End file.
